Thursday, May 22, 2014

Free Speech & William D. Cohan

Author William D. Cohan’s first written comments on the Duke
case came in an unusual forum—a CNN column bizarrely arguing for lowering the
national drinking age to 19 years old. Cohan’s proposal would have left the
strongest moral arguments against the current policy—that if you can die for
your country, you should be able to buy a beer—in place, perhaps explaining why
not a single state is considering the idea. But the column seemed designed not
to influence public policy but instead to give Cohan an opportunity to launch
character attacks against the lacrosse players. Of the tens (hundreds?) of
thousands of instances of excessive drinking on campus in the past decade,
Cohan focused on the lacrosse party.

Having departed Bloomberg View for the Huffington Post, Cohan used his inaugural
HuffPost column to again
ostensibly comment on a policy issue but mostly to discuss The Price of Silence. The column’s arresting title: “How Much
Freedom of Speech Is Too Much?”

Cohan offered three examples of an allegedly disturbing
trend of excessive free speech. One was a lawsuit from Virginia, involving
allegedly defamatory statements made about the work of a contractor. The second
was a lawsuit from Oregon, involving allegedly defamatory statements made about
the work of a contractor. The third was the fate of “authors whose books appear for sale on Amazon and then quickly get
reviewed by an increasingly large army of people who seem to have nothing
better to do with their time.” It appears as if Cohan’s chief interest
is the fate of one author in particular:William
D. Cohan. He mentions no other Amazon author in his column.

For those interested in logic puzzles, one of the three examples
in Cohan’s column is unlike the other two.

Having earlier floated a conspiracy of defense attorneys,
the State Bar, the AG’s office, and unnamed Northeastern lawyers to explain the
exoneration, Cohan is now reduced to alleging a “well-organized” conspiracy (of
unidentified individuals, led by unidentified parties) of “haters” (a favorite Cohan term!) to “poison the well” regarding what one commentator has termed a “tightly
wound 621 pages devoted to a balanced assessment of a complex event.”

(That
commentator, by the way, was William D. Cohan, practicing the kind of speech that
author William D. Cohan seems to very much like.)

Cohan’s central claim in the column is that people who hadn’t
read his book gave it negative reviews. Given that one of his five-starreviewers outright admitted not reading the book, and several others either
described a book that didn’t exist or didn’t mention Cohan’s arguments at all, Cohan’s
complaint seems one-sided. His concern seems to be less “instant, unvetted and
unfiltered commentary” than “instant, unvetted and unfiltered commentary” that
doesn’t say the sort of things that William D. Cohan wants said.

Indeed, Cohan has complained about the “speech” of critical
reviewers before; in his New York interview,
he fumed about the New Republic and Commentary turning to Stuart and me to
review his book. In a Facebook comment, he falsely suggested that Joe Neff hadn’t
read the book before writing about it. He’s been silent or praiseworthy, on the
other hand, regarding positive commentaries (Economist, Newsday) from reviewers who took away from the book
items that the book didn’t actually include.

It’s hard to imagine any neutral readers will come away from
Cohan’s column jumping on the anti-free speech bandwagon. The author, in any event,
comes across as obsessed with Amazon—the column is at least the third time he’s
complained about the site’s reviews, even as many of the negative reviews are
quite detailed and clearly come from people who are engaging with his book’s
claims. In a surprising tactical move, he even confesses to having contacted
Amazon, to inquire about an unspecified number of negative reviews (or what he
deems “clearly biased reviews”) being taken down. He gives no indication of
having demanded that Amazon remove positive reviews from people who admitted
not having read the book. Amazon unsurprisingly rebuffed Cohan’s complaint.

In the end, though, Cohan perhaps unintentionally reveals
his chief concern. The reviews, he laments, show that “the market’s verdict has
been rendered: this is a two-star book, not worthy of a moment’s consideration.”

36 comments:

For many years reviewing in the mainstream newspapers and magazines has been both incompetent and corrupt. The wider mainstream media, Cohan has just demonstrated, is ready to praise books which are outright dishonest (to use Dorothy Rabinowitz's word in the WJS this week). Amazon is the most promising alternative forum for intelligent, fair-minded reviewing. It can be as corrupt as the individual reviewer, but reviewers who use their own names,talented, resourceful people, are already deciding not only that Amazon is a worthy forum for their reviews but that it is the great democratic forum where they will reach more readers than elsewhere. In my comment on Cohan's whining diatribe in the Huffington Post on the evils of free speech I optimistically suggest that the Great Waters of Amazon may, just may, be strong enough to wash over the corrupt mainstream media which bestowed such early puff pieces on Cohan's quite despicable book.

Old episodes of Sesame Street garner 2 Stars to Cohan's 1 Star Book. That is, if 1 Star is the lowest rating one can give(?). Even Sesame Street "The Count" only has to count to one for his Amazon review. How can a complete fiction be given anything but the lowest rating for a classified non-fiction book?

I’m surprised that Amazon didn’t accede to his demand for removal, if he made one. Author Christopher Breen objected to my negative review of his book, insisted that I hadn’t read it, though I had, and, poof, the review was removed. I’ve had 5 reviews removed including a long one about the dubious benefits of defibrillators (as a review of a Philips product), and some others that were serious, and neither vulgar nor defamatory. If you don’t like a negative review at Amazon, you can get it taken down.

Nicholas, What does bringing down negative reviews for Cohan do for Amazon. A lot of "real customers" are expressing their opinion. You just make real customers angry and they might buy elsewhere, IMHO.

The reviews, he laments, show that “the market’s verdict has been rendered: this is a two-star book, not worthy of a moment’s consideration.”

NO $#**! Though, I would say two stars is a tad high in most people's estimation. Until Mr. Cohan can effectively rebut/impeach even a few of the many corroborated facts and statements set forth in "Until Proven Innocent", Durham in Wonderland blog, Mr. Neff's work in the Raleigh paper, and other sources, then his book is even less worthy of a moment's consideration.

Whoops, I forgot to mention not conducting interviews with most of the principals in this case other than Magnum and Nifong. If I was Mr. Bannon and some of the others who did such yeoman work "back in the day", I would be furious!

Just read Joan Foster's stunning condemnation of Cohan's bedding down with prosecutorial misconduct, a comment on Amazon.

Joan has now done two great services, recently.

(1) Identified the reason that Cohan, a business writer, decided to write a 600 page book about an 8 year old criminal rape case when he knows nothing about the workings of the criminal law, the ethics of prosecutors, and cannot distinguish an allele from a ukelele.

There is no conspiracy. What Mr. Cohan appears not to realize is while the actual event and its near-aftermath were taking place, many people became very conversant with the incident, Group of 88, Crystal Mangum, SANE nurses, DNA labs, Brad Bannon, and a long list of other people, places and things relevant to "The Duke Lacrosse Case" We all read Durham in Wonderland, Liestoppers,and outputs from other entities and (speaking for myself) have a pretty good, albeit layman's, knowledge of the case's particulars. Then someone comes along 6 years later, almost totally ignoring the mountain of published work on the case, fails to interview 90 %+ of the principals and expects people not to harshly critique his efforts. What the ....?

Cohan picked the Lacrosse Rape Hoax because he could sell books attacking privileged, white, male, student athletes. That is it. Nothing more complicated than that.

If he could sell books arguing that Dreyfus really was a traitor, Cohan would be right there, collecting his publisher's advance.

It was a minor inconvenience that Mike Nifong was an unethical prosecutor. Prosecutorial misconduct is also frowned upon within Cohan's circles. However, Cohan softened that problem, for a while, until finally a member of the club could not stand it anymore, and called him out on it.

The real nastiness in Price of Silence is the unanswered character assassination of the Lacrosse players. Professor Coleman's factual splash of cold water is ignored, and the true facts of the character and behavior of the Lacrosse players is completely absent. This suits Cohan and his audience.

Huffington Post has a point of view. On Cohan's reputation as an investigative reporter, Cohan fits right in. He apparently is considered a regular by Huffington Post.

Huffington readers have almost uniformly rejected the idea of limiting freedom of speech for Cohan's critics. (This is based on my reading of the first 22 or so comments).

Freedom of speech is important within Cohan's circle. Heads must have snapped in editorial offices from the New Yorker to Salon to the Economist when they read Cohan's call for limiting free speech.

You will find no one within these circles supporting Cohan's call to censor book reviews.

My opinion is that Cohan has stepped out-side the reservation, twice: First, when he went too far selling the benefits of prosecutor misconduct during his snake oil sales tour. Second, when he called for censoring book reviews.

Right, so he's trying to make the public think prosecutor damage is ok so that they will think the current corruption of the duke / durham DA office is ok, especially when the DA's corruption is directed negatively at people involved in the duke lacrosse case, and publishing at this time in order to try another duke push at public brainwashing to 'save' duke by confusion and chaos fueled injustice. There is nothing new about that where Duke is concerned.

An interesting thing I've found out in the past 24 hours: of the 18 five-star reviews at Amazon, one is by someone named Deb Futter (who reviewed under the pseudonym "D. Retah")--which happens to be the name of Cohan's wife. Four others are by people with names identical to four people explicitly thanked by Cohan in the acknowledgements to the book--Michael Brod, Jerome Buttrick, Alan Cantor and Eric Osserman (who reviewed under the name "dukeno1"). And a sixth is by Charles Rector, who has a long history of absurd commentary on the lacrosse case.

The current Wikipedia draft includes Cohan's self-serving call for censoring book reviews, and another self-serving lengthy article describing how Amazon reviews can be blitzed. Cohan's Army has already been there.

It does not include the review by Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Dorothy Rabinowitz (Dishonest rewrite of the Lacrosse Story), nor Hershel Parker's review (A book that should not have been published).

I have no idea how to offer edits to Wikipedia.

Request: (1) If you know how, please go there and consider whether the site is not being engineered to mislead readers, Or,

(2) Explain how to edit the site, or where to go to learn, and I will do it my self.

I'd be careful here. I just played around with Amazon Wishlists and was able to link a fake account with my name. So I would suggest first that "D. Retah" started a fake account, and then someone else a fake account for "Deb Futter" and crosslinked them. The Futter list has zero items and yet is "Public". As pointed out before, the sloppy language is unlike a book editor.

>The current Wikipedia draft includes Cohan's self-serving call for censoring book reviews, and another self-serving lengthy article describing how Amazon reviews can be blitzed. Cohan's Army has already been there.

I don't think so. It is someone trying to be "neutral" in the spirit of Wikipedia, or as much as possible.

>It does not include the review by Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Dorothy Rabinowitz (Dishonest rewrite of the Lacrosse Story), nor Hershel Parker's review (A book that should not have been published).

It does include The Rabinowitz review:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_D._Cohan#cite_note-10

Where is the Parker review? If you want specific reviews included, then please give the explicit links here for perusal. If someone want to edit into a Wikipedia entry, then that makes it easy. Remember, facts have to be sourced.

>I have no idea how to offer edits to Wikipedia.

They have good, short tutorials. Very easy. Start with "Help" page on left side:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:ContentsTo edit:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial/EditingEasy way is to have the rendered page next to the editing page so you can see how the markup works and just copy/ paste and edit and "show preview", then edit out mistakes. Then do it again. Nothing is visible on Wikipedia until you "Save Page".

> Request: (1) If you know how, please go there and consider whether the site is not being engineered to mislead readers

I don't think it is being engineered at all. It is an iterative process, and the issues that are discussed here are appearing in the entry for Cohan. There is now also an entry for the "Price of Silence" which needs needs substantial additions. Consider working on that. Even if it is messy, others will clean it up. Eventually all the "controversy" stuff about the book should be encapsulated with the book entry, and only Cohan specific items (meaning concerning the author and not a book) left with the Cohan entry. Of course mention of controversy where Cohan is involved in some activities apart from the content of the book can be mentioned in the Cohan entry explicitly, or linked to in another article.

Someone needs to tell the commenters on reviews of Price of Silence on Amazon, enough already, don't overplay your hand. Going on and on and on, determined to trounce what has already taken a hit from which it most likely cannot recover, can undermine public trust in the spontaneous nature of the uprising that took place on Amazon.

Just my opinion. The facts are in place there. Let them speak for themselves. The author Cohan has not responded to the issues raised, just grumbled about "haters" and free speech. His response speaks for itself.

In the age of Information Overload, impressions count, as no one can read it all.

It is possible for someone like Cohan to wave at the withering blizzard of negative reviews and commentary and say, as he has done, "there must be something wrong with the reviews - there are so many of them and they all say the same thing".

The fact neither he, nor anyone else, ever answers the criticisms in the reviews, goes unnoticed by many. No one can read it all.

In important ways, this is the tragedy of the age of information overload. Joan Foster's impassioned and, in my view accurate and timely comments about the harm done to Blacks and other minorities by Nifong and now Cohan, should be read by everyone.

It is just that it cannot be. So, the whole issue just dissolves into an exercise in public relations.

Jim Peterson--can you suggest putting Mark Wylie's review into the PRICE OF SILENCE Wiki bibliography? I posted it on my blog (with Wylie's permission) but I don't know how to add it to the Wiki bibliography. It will be in the big Amazon link but it deserves to be in the bibliography separately, I think. Thanks!

@Hershel Parker 5/29/14, 11:50 AM said...>Jim Peterson--can you suggest putting Mark Wylie's review into the PRICE OF SILENCE Wiki bibliography? I posted it on my blog (with Wylie's permission) but I don't know how to add it to the Wiki bibliography. It will be in the big Amazon link but it deserves to be in the bibliography separately, I think. Thanks!

It would be much better if you communicate to Wylie and have him post it on a blog separate from the Amazon comments. Until then a direct link to the review would be OK, but not the best.

@ Hershel Parker said...>Jim Peterson--can you suggest putting Mark Wylie's review into the PRICE OF SILENCE Wiki bibliography? I posted it on my blog (with Wylie's permission) but I don't know how to add it to the Wiki bibliography. It will be in the big Amazon link but it deserves to be in the bibliography separately, I think. Thanks!

Looks like it was done:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Price_of_Silence_(2014_book)#cite_ref-23

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I am from Higgins Beach, in Scarborough, Maine, six miles south of Portland. After spending five years as track announcer at Scarborough Downs, I left to study fulltime in graduate school, where my advisor was Akira Iriye. I have a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard, and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. At Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, I teach classes in 20th century US political, constitutional, and diplomatic history; in 2007-8, I was Fulbright Distinguished Chair for the Humanities at Tel Aviv University.

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"From the Scottsboro Boys to Clarence Gideon, some of the most memorable legal narratives have been tales of the wrongly accused. Now “Until Proven Innocent,” a new book about the false allegations of rape against three Duke lacrosse players, can join these galvanizing cautionary tales . . , Taylor and Johnson have made a gripping contribution to the literature of the wrongly accused. They remind us of the importance of constitutional checks on prosecutorial abuse. And they emphasize the lesson that Duke callously advised its own students to ignore: if you’re unjustly suspected of any crime, immediately call the best lawyer you can afford."--Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Book Review